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AMERICAN HOMES AND' GARDENS 



October, 1905 



Monthly Comment 



HE booming of Newport has been one of the 

 novelties of the past summer. No place in 

 the world seems less in need of' general ad- 

 vertising, for its fame is very great and very 

 present. A spot of historic interest belongs 

 to the past, and events concerned with it be- 

 long to times that are gone; but Newport is with us, if not 

 exactly every day, at least so constantly that when it is not 

 actually in the public eye many people are thinking of it, 

 and the summer history furnishes food for talk and thought 

 during many a long winter month. Why, then, is not this 

 sufficient? To the outsider it seems ample, but to the good 

 folk of Newport it appears that much may be yet done in at- 

 tracting people to its borders. A deliberate attempt has, 

 therefore, been made to bring people of moderate means to 

 Newport. That the rich have settled there, settled with an 

 abundance of costly dwellings, is known to all men; but it 

 seems this goodly company of the exclusives is not sufficient 

 'for the pride of the summer capital. It has been imagined 

 that less wealthy people might make a better class of resi- 

 dents, who would stay longer, and perhaps spend more 

 money, in proportion, than the rich settlers. Accordingly 

 Newport has been boomed, and boomed to a considerable 

 extent. It is as yet too early to note the results of this cam- 

 paign, which can not be agreeable to the wealthy residents, 

 who, after all, have made Newport what it is. Whether it 

 will result in the destruction of Newport's present exclusive, 

 high-priced atmosphere remains to be seen. The results of 

 such a campaign may be quite different than what its pro- 

 moters anticipated. 



The booming of towns by concerted advertising has long 

 been a favorite American enterprise. It varies according to 

 the ends sought and the conditions of the locality. Some 

 towns are boomed for manufacturing purposes, and even 

 Newport did not escape this penalty of fame a few years 

 since, only to demonstrate that it was not suited for manu- 

 facturing purposes. Other towns are boomed as residential 

 sites; others for general conditions, or as summer and winter 

 resorts because of their various attractions. The latter form 

 of advertising is the most favored in the East, where its 

 necessity is the more felt, and its value, both to the advertiser 

 and the person responding to the advertisement, is more 

 quickly seen. In the West it is the manufacturing advantages 

 that are most generally advertised. All of these things are 

 fine examples of the value of advertising, and good instances 

 of the necessity of being ready to say a good word about 

 oneself. 



The approaching destruction of the earliest steel cage 

 building in New York, that its site be utilized for the erection 

 of a high building, is one of the most interesting illustrations 

 of the rapidity of modern changes in building construction 

 that has been recorded for a long time. The structure in 

 question is the Tower Building, built by Mr. Bradford L. 

 Gilbert only seventeen years ago, a building ten stories in 

 height, which it is now proposed to replace with one of twice 

 this altitude. It shows not only how rapidly our ideas con- 

 cerning large and tall buildings are extending, but it also 

 shows the great value of real estate in lower New York when 

 a building perfectly sound in construction, filled with tenants 

 and presumably returning an income on the capital invested, 

 can be torn down to make way for a larger building which 

 will certainly be more expensive to build. As to the profit- 



ableness of the new building, that is a matter in the future, 

 but it is apparent that the new venture would not be made 

 did not competent judges regard it as a good business 

 investment. 



The formation of a mounted State constabulary by 

 Pennsylvania, as established by a law adopted by the last 

 Legislature, is a significant and important movement, the 

 development of which will be keenly watched not only within 

 that commonwealth, but by all rural communities through- 

 out the country. The lack of police protection outside the 

 cities is one of the most serious evils of American life. It 

 has encouraged crime by the failure to provide means for 

 protection and detection. It is the first and greatest duty of 

 the State to protect its peoples, for the greatest safety lies in 

 giving such adequate protection that the fear of detection 

 and punishment will prevent the commission of crime. The 

 difficulties of protecting great stretches of rural land, such 

 as form the larger part of America, are, of course, very 

 great; but the dangers of non-protection have, each year, be- 

 come greater and greater, and the necessity of taking some 

 adequate steps has long been apparent. Pennsylvania has 

 taken the lead in this movement, and its subsequent develop- 

 ment will be watched everywhere with the deepest interest. 

 In a measure, these first steps will be largely experimental; 

 at least, it is not proposed to police the entire State at once, 

 but to begin in a modest way — the initial appropriation is 

 but $425,000 — and to develop the work as its value is shown 

 and the means can be obtained to defray the expense. 



That the Woman's Club has developed into a " move- 

 ment " has been apparent for a number of years. It is not 

 only a movement, but a dignified movement; one of great 

 usefulness and value, commanding and absorbing the thought 

 and time of many persons, to whom it has opened new ways 

 of activity, new modes of thought, given new ideas and led 

 to more useful lives. It has taken men a long time to under- 

 stand that there was any real basis of value in the Woman's 

 Club. The typical man's club is one for social intercourse. 

 The Woman's Club presented something different. Here 

 was a frantic searching of the encyclopedias in the prepara- 

 tion of abstruse papers on every conceivable theme. Fair 

 ladies who, but a month or two before, knew of Shakespeare 

 only as a great name, suddenly burst upon an amazed en- 

 vironment as the authors of learned Shakespearian disquisi- 

 tions. Literature was ransacked from beginning to end; his- 

 tory also, and travel; a general inquisitiveness sorted out the 

 whole knowledge of the world, and served it up of an after- 

 noon with tea and cake. It was hard to convince a mere 

 man that there was real value in any of this, or that the 

 good ladies were, in any true way, contributing to the learn- 

 ing of the world or even ministering to their own happiness. 

 Then a change swept over affairs. From past times the 

 Woman's Clubs emigrated to the present. They began to 

 concern themselves with the life and the things around them. 

 The magic word " reform " became the battle cry, and the 

 students of history and of literature became leaders in all 

 manners of good works. This saved the Woman's Club, 

 and has made it one of the most useful of modern agencies 

 for betterment. Not all of this new energy has been wisely 

 directed; not all of the reforms proposed have been wise or 

 desirable : there has been much done that need not have been 

 done, and the world is much too busy to tolerate the unnec- 

 essary. But, on the whole, the later developments of the 

 Woman's Club have been for good, and for good alone. 



